


and we will put the lonesome on the shelf

by goblindaughter



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Cuddling, F/M, ZevWarden Week, mention of female surana/morrigan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-08-07 06:58:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7704856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goblindaughter/pseuds/goblindaughter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Warden-Commander and her assassin, reunited at last. Post-Awakening.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and we will put the lonesome on the shelf

**Author's Note:**

> This is for Zevwarden week! Head on over to zevranology on tumblr or check out the tag to see all the other cool contributions.

It’s been a long day in a series of long days, and there are more yet to come. The Keep, at least, is recovering well, and the crops are coming along, and Alistair’s letters are growing steadily less frantic as he finds his feet (she is both amused and pleased by his exponentially decreasing tolerance for Eamon’s horse-shit). But there’s an increasing bandit issue, the Chantry seems to delight in being as uncooperative as possible, and the banns are raising so much trouble that Daryusha Surana--Arlessa, Warden-Commander, in need of a long hot bath and twelve straight hours of sleep--is about ready to strangle them all and start over again.

Wearily, Daryusha mounts the stairs to her tower room (she found it amusing and somewhat cathartic; this tower she owns entirely). Her shoulders throb, her thighs twinge; she’s done entirely too much riding for good taste today. She rounds the corner--and stops. Light spills from under the door. Someone’s in there. _Who on earth_? An assassin would have left it dark; the servants ( _her_ servants, a luxury she’s still unused to) wouldn’t have left the light on. She reaches for her staff; the crescents spark in anticipation. Moving silently, she pushes the door open--

And there stands Zevran in the light of the lantern. A little road-worn, a little bruised, but solidly before her and not a world away in Antiva. He smiles crookedly at her. “Are you not happy to see me, mi amore?”

“Zevran Arainai, will you never learn to use the front gate?” Daryusha says, but a smile tugs at her lips, and she steps into his arms and buries her face in his shoulder. He smells of sweat and road dust and blood; she does not care. He’s _here_ . (Deep in her there comes a pang; that she has one lover with her and another beyond finding. _Oh, Morrigan, Morrigan_.) “I’ve missed you.”

“And I you.” She tilts her face up and kisses him, slowly, hungrily; he raises a hand and cups her head, thumb against the hinge of her jaw, fingers curling in her braids. This close she can feel his half-healed wounds, his bruises, the new weakness in his left little finger where it was lately broken, the strained muscle in one shoulder. With a sigh, she pulls away. “May I?”

“Please.”

Daryusha extends a tendril of power, pushing a burst of healing energy through him.Ordinarily, it’s an expenditure she’d hardly notice, but now she yawns jaw-crackingly wide and sways. Zevran steadies her. “Bed for you, I think.”

“A bath first, you lech.”

He laughs and lets her tug him into the next room, where there waits a sunken bath (proof anyone may get used to anything). They each ease out of their armor and divest themselves of their weapons--but her staff and one of his knives both remain within easy reach, from the sort of long habit that ensures a long live. Zevran pulls the pins from her hair for her, combing the braids out with his fingers. She shivers and tilts her head against his hand, catlike. Still, they are both too tired and too ready for the softness of the bed to do more than enjoy the hot water.

Afterwards, Daryusha expends more precious power to dry her hair and pulls it into a loose braid, and falls into the bed beside him. (Which, like the bath, is proof that anyone may get used to anything: it’s twice the size of her bed in the circle, and nearly the size of the kitchen in her childhood home.) They lay facing each other, his leg hooked between hers, warm beneath the covers. For the first time in months, she lets her guard down properly, stops watching the exits, _relaxes_.

Oh, but it’s been too long.

“You didn’t say you were coming back,” she says, faintly accusingly. She’d have liked a letter, at least.

“I made the journey with some haste,” he admits.

“Mm. I forgive you,” she says, “Tell me of Antiva. Tell me of the Crows.”

Zevran obliges. He speaks of knives in the dark and blood, of shaky alliances and the powerful brought low, of House Arainai in flames. “They will of course come after me again, but alas, some things a man cannot do alone. Has there been any word from your wild witch?” Zevran and Morrigan have only her in common, but there is concern in his eyes nevertheless. For her sake.

“No.” She sighs, one hand going to the twisted-wood wing that hangs at the hollow of her throat beside Zevran’s earring. “I would know if she died--but that’s very little to know.”

“I wish I could reassure you, but...”

“Quite.” There is no way of knowing whether Morrigan will even return, and both of them know it. Neither goes in for comforting platitudes.

“Tell me what I’ve missed.”

“Oh, thorny politics, thinking Darkspawn...” She explains--Rylock, and the settling of the new King in Denerim, and the battle in the tunnels. And, best of all, her new ally. “The Architect,” Daryusha says, “Is a mage of some skill. Greater, in some areas, than my own. I think together we might find a way to cure the Taint--to stop the Calling.”

“Truly?”

“Truly.”

“How sure are you?” He presses a kiss soft skin of her wrist, to the tangle of veins at the pulse point. They are not gray, not yet. Not like Duncan’s. No, she has many years before that. Perhaps the whole rest of her life, if the Architect and she can do what they hope to do.

(She allows herself to hope, in this. She must.)

“Very sure. But,” she says steadily, “If we fail, if it comes to pass that the Calling cannot be cured--”

“Then we will go down together.” He says it with conviction, as if he has known this thing for months--perhaps he has. Perhaps he decided when he gave her the earring. Sudden unreasoning terror twists in Daryusha’s gut. _Not him. Not him._

“ _No.”_ Unguarded as she is here with him, she startles herself with her own vehemence. “You would not. You would stay here and live, Zevran.”

“Without you?”

“I would have you safe.” Daryusha reaches up to brush his hair back, traces the line of his tattoo with her thumb.

“And I would stay at your side, mi amore.”

“No,” she says again. “No.” She props herself up on her elbow and looks at him seriously, brows drawn together. “You told me once you would storm the gates of the Dark City with me. So for me--stay here. Please.”

This is, she thinks, a foolish argument. _If_ she and the Architect fail to the find a cure, the Calling is fifteen years at least ahead; who can say if she’ll even survive that long? The Architect’s forces are helping, but there are battles aplenty to fight still, and intrigues atop that. An elfin mage was never meant to be Warden-Commander, much less Arlessa or Councillor to the King. The Banns dislike her; the Chantry loathes her with a fire to rival the magma of the Deep Roads. Just last month someone slipped poison in her wine.

But the thought of Zevran at her side in the dark as she goes to the Calling--the thought takes her and _cuts._ It has claws. She will not say she is at peace with the idea of her own death; there is so much she has yet to wring from this world. But her life is _hers_ , hers to risk, hers to give up, if that is what she must choose. _Not him,_ she thinks again.

Zevran’s face softens--he looks so much younger, with that look in his eyes, so much less the weapon--and he tugs her back down beside him. “I don’t wish to argue this endlessly.”

“Neither do I.” She kisses him, the lightest brush of her lips on his. “It will not come to the Calling if I have my way.”

“Do you not always?”

Daryusha laughs. “Not always. I’d far rather have gone with you to Antiva these past months. But Amaranthine requires its Arlessa.”

“You’ve gone up in the world.”

“I’m not sure I like that. And I’m not sure what may be done about it.” She sighs. It’s not as if she can give the title up--not that Alistair would be hurt; no, he’d understand quite well, even if he doesn’t hate being King as much as he thought he would. But she _cannot_ afford to cede a speck of power. Even if she rather suspects that this particular speck is far more trouble than it’s worth. “I suppose we’ll have to see.”

“Daryusha--whatever comes, we shall face it together.”

She takes his hand, laces her fingers through his. Smiles. “You and I. Hardly even odds.”

“Quite unfair to the rest of the world, I agree.”

  



End file.
